Human
by Countess Millarca
Summary: In the wake of his clash with Naruto, Gaara vies to become something he has never been.
1. Semblance

_Disclaimer: I don't own Naruto. All rights belong to Masashi Kishimoto._

 _A/N: This is a short-chaptered story and it is complete. Enjoy. :)  
_

* * *

 _"We are never so defenseless against suffering as when we love."_

 _― Sigmund Freud_

* * *

The night falls. The night falls. The night falls and falls and falls and falls until the glister of the sand dies and cold bites its viscera and sinks deep in the gritty flesh of the desert and howls from within the hollow throat of the world he lives in.

Gaara stands on the edge of the cleft between the two cliff faces that allow passage into the village. It is quiet and calm, all the things that he isn't, despite what shows on his face. No one is there to witness what is and what isn't. He stands there night after night after night after night until everything around him ebbs into sibilant breaths and sleep.

He never sleeps. Shukaku never sleeps. His mother never sleeps.

Sleep is a little death; sleep is a suspension of control. Sleep is being devoured; sleep is the time when the beast gormandizes, the soul-flaying terror of human parts forsaken, melting inside the magmatic pit of the tanuki's belly to settle in layers of sediment in its bottom. To sleep means to wake – wake with copper-lust on his tongue, raw instinct wound around his senses, coagulation of blood-silence and nothingness. Alone. _Alone_.

Alone feels different now. Being alone isn't the proof of existence and love he has sought in the quicksand of carnage. Self-love is rejection of human nature. A boy who feeds on his own heart will become the beast when there is nothing left to englut, and even then will crave for more of the sweet-tender-pure ecstasy that is the taste of human soul. Never sated, always hungry.

Gaara wants to be _human_. He wants to die a little every night.

* * *

Chapter One

* * *

The Kazekage's office is a mausoleum of sabulous walls and dreadful decisions. A babeldom spreads among the council elders after the news Baki has brought. He waits as they digest shock and revelations, his eyes trailing over the statue of the Yondaime. Rasa's absence is twice as heavy as the weight of his statue, and beneath its shadow, his children stand silent and miniscule. He can see no similarity, except perhaps Kankurō, but the paint that slathers his face hides it well. Baki half-believes Kankurō's choice to study the puppet technique and don the color on his skin stems from that resemblance. Rasa's middle son is peculiar like that. Kankurō's love for his younger brother is as subtle as it is glaring, and Gaara's animosity of their father the same.

Slowly, the noises shift lower, morph into denial and umbrage. Tension sharp, tongues sharper.

"This is a disaster. As if things weren't bad enough before." Sajō shakes his head. His lids rise by a margin, merely enough to pierce Baki with his stare. "And now you're telling us to sign a treaty with Konoha? That's the primary reason we're in this mess, Baki."

Nothing Baki hasn't predicted. His gaze meets Sajō's squarely, grim and resolute, just like his voice. "With the Kazekage gone and our resources depleted, what other choice is there?"

Jōseki's scoff drills into Baki's ears.

"Gone." The word is vitriolic and dipped in sarcasm. "Why don't you just come out and say it? Rasa went and got himself killed by the very person who was supposed to be our last hope – and we can't even avenge him. Not that it'd do us any good at this point."

Baki grits his teeth at the blatant disrespect, in this very room of all places, but Gōza mediates with his too-calm manner.

"Watch your words, Jōseki." Gōza's voice spills out of his throat in too-soft nuances, doesn't sound like reprimand, but it is all that and more. "Everything Rasa has ever done was for the benefit of the village." His neck tilts in the direction of the Yondaime's statue with meaning. "Don't speak ill of the dead, much less in front of Rasa's family."

"Family." Another scoff. More acid and sarcasm. Jōseki's lip curls as if the meaning that _family_ encloses offends him. "They are shinobi of the Sand. Blood means nothing in this room." Gaze narrow, skin tight around his mouth, he studies the youngest of the Sand siblings. "Rasa knew that better than anyone."

Baki can see revulsion in the tightness of Jōseki's mouth, in the glint of his eyes, pitch-black with acceptance of that revulsion. Gaara lives by Rasa's decree, or at least that is what Jōseki wants to accept, because the truth Baki knows is unpalatable to the eleven elders at this table. Gaara lives by his will alone – and no one can change that.

"Enough." Baki's voice echoes, one lash of command. He's had _enough_ – enough of this hypocrisy. Gaara might not care but _he does_ , if only for the fact that Rasa has been his liege, his charge, his friend. Such insolence and discourtesy to Rasa's legacy cannot be tolerated. His eyes slash through each and every one with the glare of his intolerance. "Since Rasa's replacement hasn't been decided yet, we'll vote."

A susurrus encroaches in the wake of his demand, hands being raised, some low and unsure, some high and firm. It doesn't matter, only that they raise them. A dip of his chin concludes the matter.

"Majority is in favor. Gōza will draft the treaty if there are no objections?"

No dispute follows, though Ryūsa raises another question, brings another matter to discussion.

"What about the Kazekage position? We need it filled as soon as possible."

It is more statement than question, but Baki has no answer to give, none of them does. There has been no other _but_ Rasa for years; there will probably be no other for still more.

"There aren't any notable candidates, not to mention that we must have the Daimyō's approval."

Silence reigns, then Jōseki clicks his tongue, his face an ill grimace of rancor.

"He won't care even if we appoint a genin, that petty bastard."

"Jōseki –" Gōza is too late to mediate this time, his reprimand withering away with a sigh, but perhaps consciously. Someone _has_ to say it, and Jōseki always does.

"You know it's true. If it weren't for him cutting our budget and choosing to employ Konoha nin, Rasa would have never involved himself in Orochimaru's schemes. The sooner he steps down and his successor takes over, the better for us."

Baki doesn't like the connotations meshed in that last sentence. It is open with careless ease but sealed with dark intent. A shiver creeps down his spine, coiling around his vertebrae with foreboding. Even if he warns Jōseki against any ploys brewing in the other elder's mind, he can't stop him. Without the Kazekage, the elders only answer to themselves. Still, Baki tries.

"I hope you're not planning anything foolish."

A smile is all Jōseki gives, one twist of cracked lips and vileness. Baki pretends he never sees it but he can't pretend he never sees the way Jōseki's eyes flit to Gaara for a split second. _Nothing good will come of this._ Baki's mouth clamps down on itself. Words are useless. Why is that the only thing he has? _Rasa…why did you die before me?_

The council comes to an end after more useless words, more denial, more umbrage. Baki regrets his rash decision to have Rasa's children attend the council simply because they are part of the events that have led to this quagmire. In truth, they don't need to be here. Temari doesn't need to endure the lewd stares of men thrice her age; Kankurō doesn't need to know Rasa's failure when he looks so much like him; Gaara doesn't need to draw Jōseki's attention when he is recognized as nothing but an instrument.

Baki can only stand rigid and forbidding as Jōseki approaches them with measured steps.

"Gaara." There is such repulsive overtone in Jōseki's voice when he speaks the name – _demon-spawn_ , _demon-love_ – that Baki hopes it will be enough to deter him. But it isn't. "Come see me tonight."

If Gaara has even listened, nothing reveals it. The child is as cold and unmoving and lifeless as the statue of his father above him. Baki clears his throat. A vain attempt to forge some excuse in case Gaara _has_ listened slithers down his tongue.

"The Kazekage's burial will take place tonight."

Temari is the one who nods. "We'll be there."

Her voice carries the strain of the eldest and her eyes gleam like blue copper but softness reflects in the cutting sheen.

Baki's gaze falls on Kankurō. _So much like Rasa…so much._

"Kankurō." What Baki says is addressed to all three but more to Kankurō, and that is why he speaks his name, seeks his eyes. Baki will never hide behind hypocrisy like the rest of them. It is the least he can do, and he owes it to Rasa.

"I'm sorry for your loss."

A distortion of purple paint and eyes and lips. Kankurō smiles but there is another kind of pain in his smile, not the one Baki expects or wants to see.

"Your loss is greater than mine."

He understands then. The man Baki remembers has always been more Kazekage than father.


	2. Father

The sun sets. The sun sets. The sun sets and sets and sets and sets and fire-tongues lash across the gold skin of the desert until it bleeds with dark ichor. From within the gashes glow pours out in brilliant points of star-blue and white-hot phosphorescence. Far-spreading, wide-reaching, it swallows the sun and seeps into the sand until there is nothing but blood clotting inside the swollen veins of the world he sinks his teeth in.

Gaara knows this taste, the only nourishment he has ever been fed. Blood-thirst. Blood-heat. It is rather ironic, vestige of some twisted protection, that he has never known the taste of his own blood. When he _does_ _know_ – he burns with such mad impulsion to never have its taste again that it becomes an inferno.

Blood is the voice of the beast; blood is the love of his mother. Blood is being alive; blood is the chain that binds Shukaku, the slick-tailed whip for the tanuki's taming, spilt for the need of spilling. An apotheosis, that spilling.

Shukaku may never sleep but he purrs after he has gorged himself on bloodlust and human hatred. It is silk-soft and glutted with odious docility. The beast's lullaby. Urges lurk at the edge of his purr but merely that. Satiety. _Silence_. It is the silence that Gaara craves, not the spilling that perpetuates the satiety.

* * *

Chapter Two

* * *

It is deep night and chill when Gaara slips past the guards and inside Jōseki's office. The elder sits behind his desk, skin folded with age and malice, waiting. Gaara takes one step forward, and another.

"You're here." Jōseki's voice is full of gravel and mild surprise, as if he hasn't expected him to come, but it soon turns into ravishment. "Good."

How Jōseki accents that word, like he holds the leash and at its end Gaara is the pet who needs to be rewarded for good behavior, rouses swirls of aggression. Gaara has not heeded the summons out of obedience or hierarchy. It is necessity that makes him heel and the infant want of an excuse, some kind of reason to kill, no matter how flimsy, how fallible. Shinobi mete out death for the sake of their village. His father has taught Gaara that lesson six times in the past. In the end, it's as good a reason as any, and the _only one_ he can now accept. Perhaps if he accepts that simple truth then he can forgive what should be unforgiven.

Sand rises and hisses and writhes with rows of myriad grains, a snake dance of killing instinct, and Jōseki flinches. Apprehension contorts his features in a mask of wan skin and friable bones.

 _Good_ , Gaara thinks. Fear is good.

Despite that there isn't the merest blink of eyes, the merest twitch of lips, the thought must have manifested on his face because Jōseki's mouth peels back, more baring of teeth, less human expression. Gaara appraises it slowly. One glance of detached curiosity, and mockery. Who is the beast now?

Jōseki is raising his arm in the next moment with one picture gripped between his fingers. The man depicted there appears to be in his midlife, lavishly dressed in brown silk and purple garb, dark-skinned, dark-haired.

"This man is the current Wind Daimyō. Everything you need to know about him is written inside the scroll."

Gaara's gaze darts to the scroll on the far end of the desk, made of plain paper and inconspicuous but its contents far from that, then back to Jōseki's face.

"You know what to do and what not to." _Kill him. Quickly, quietly. Leave no trace; tell no one._

Gaara reads the unspoken words in the bright gleam of Jōseki's eyes, so bright that it evanesces all shadow and cunning until only void remains. Bottomless. Sinister. An abyss of self-righteousness and delusion. _For the sake of the village._ His father may have wielded the same ideals as justification for every word and action, but Gaara cannot bring himself to believe the Kazekage has been the same as this person before him. Because _if_ he has been…Gaara cannot hope to ever forgive him.

An impatient sound crawls out of Jōseki's throat when Gaara stays silent for too long as it seems.

"So what will it be?"

Gaara takes the scroll, and Jōseki smiles. It is too vicious for a smile, warped with sordid pleasure and things Gaara loathes to see. He has seen too much of them in reflections of blood-mirrors for the past eight years.

* * *

For a man of the Kazekage status, incongruously few people attend the obsequies. There is no body to lather in the seven sacred oils and wrap with strips of fine linen, only sand-scoured bones inhumed deep into the earth and sarcous hunks long since digested in the vultures' stomach.

Kankurō stares at the tombstone which marks the grave of the man he has most often called _Kazekage-sama_ , and far less often… _father_. But it hasn't always been so. _When did I stop calling him_ father _?_ The obfuscous membrane that coats his memory enshrouds the _when_ but not the _why_. Kankurō can never forget that. _After I stopped calling Gaara_ monster _._ Shame saturates the flesh of his tongue, sizzles and suppurates, old-festered wounds and septic shock. Children are so facilely, so pathetically impressionable, and that is why he despises them – despises the child _he_ has once been. No matter how long he stares at this grave, Kankurō can never speak the word _father_ , cannot forgive the man for robbing him of that joy, just as he can't forgive himself for being that child he so despises.

Temari's fingers stroke the curve of his shoulder, and though she doesn't speak either, her smile is laden with words. She motions for him to leave with her after the ceremony is done, but he shakes his head. Temari understands, he can tell, even if she doesn't approve. Her smile sharpens on her lips, and she draws him close for a brush of skin and heat, then walks away.

Gaara will not come. He won't come. Won't come. Still, Kankurō waits.

The last dark of the morning is fading when Gaara comes. But _he comes_. Blood-drenched, deathly calm, maniacally quiet, the afterimage of murder.

Kankurō wants to murder Jōseki. Teeth bite the inside of his lip until it bleeds and iron glides down his throat mixed with purple grape dye.

"Gaara." Nothing but a whisper, and hoarseness. "I didn't think you'd come." Three large steps, and he stands beside Gaara. "But I waited anyway."

No reply, no motion. Kankurō tilts his head, stares down at the mess of blood-red his brother has been reduced to. Gaara only lives; he only suspires. The pad of a bloodied finger then – Gaara drags his fingertip over the arc of the gravestone in one languorous graze.

"Kankurō." Necks slanting, gazes boring. "Did you love father?"

There is _something_ in Gaara's eyes – breath of blue-green fire, so _alive_ – that he can only speak the truth.

"No…and yes."


	3. Guilt

The wind howls. The wind howls. The wind howls and howls and howls and howls until sensation ingurgitates the voice of the desert and fangs rip out the ligaments of time and immortality spills from within the chasmal maw of the world he falls in.

Gaara leaps into the sandstorm – and laughs. He laughs because the desert rages and no one can hear him; he laughs as he is disintegrating into bloodless granules and merging with the sand; he laughs until he is swept up in the centre of the twister and the calm washes over him.

Sand is the gold of Lazarus; sand is the beginning and the end. Sand is being deathless; sand is the skin which stretches over mutilation, the arenaceous fibers of a heart half-eaten, sewing the holes so that the blood-rush won't become the hourglass before the choke.

Gaara _loves_ sand. He loves losing himself in its savage affection. It is the one thing that doesn't belong to Shukaku.

 _Mine._ Mine _. Forever mine_.

* * *

Chapter Three

* * *

The waiting room is filled with hunched bodies and the light that indicates surgery is being performed has been red for two hours.

Nara Shikamaru is the embodiment of failure and self-loathing, wretchedness made flesh and bone. There are no more tears than those already shed, no more cowardice than that already shown. Only waiting and more waiting.

Temari's arms cross and uncross; her legs shift and unshift; her lips purse and unpurse. She hates hospitals, but more than that, the tears, the cowardice, the _waiting_. Every time she enters a hospital, she becomes that three year old girl who waits for a mother she will never see or kiss or hug again. Temari resents that girl – for resenting the brother who has killed that mother. _It wasn't Gaara's fault._ The thought comes unbidden, familiar as the throb of pain it brings, and she curses herself.

That girl is _dead_ – dead as her mother.

A smirk slashes across her lips, slays the remnants of that resentment, and she turns her gaze on Shikamaru. "How about we play a game while we wait?"

Slowly, listlessly, his spine straightens. Shikamaru blinks once, then his eyes lock with hers.

"A game? Now?"

His voice is a ghost of a whisper but that _now_ screams with disbelief and imputation.

Temari chuckles. "It won't make a difference whether you cry your eyes out or play a game, now will it?"

His lack of reply is answer enough.

"So." Smirk sharper, chuckle softer. "I say a word, you say the first thing that comes to your mind, and vice versa."

She doesn't wait for his reply this time.

"Chūnin."

It is deliberately cruel, that she chooses this word, because Shikamaru doesn't want comfort – he wants someone to hurt him – and that comes naturally to her.

A noise thrums in his throat but he plays the game.

"Troublesome."

Temari clicks her tongue. "You can only use _troublesome_ once."

As if to spite her, or simply out of habit, he mutters _troublesome_ under his breath. She shakes her head, but the word he gives coils around her neck with vice-like constriction.

"Brother."

The way his eyes have hardened is telling – grey heated into charcoal, gone dark with knowledge, and darker. Shikamaru isn't the only one who wants to be hurt.

"Kankurō." A little breathless.

Shikamaru smirks, dripping with challenge, as if to say _are you ready to stop this game now?_

Temari only huffs. She spits the next word like a snake hiss. "Father."

Amusement lights his eyes as he glances at the man languishing in the opposite corner of the waiting room. "Pervert."

Her chest shakes with laughter. It is as appropriate as it isn't. Temari struggles to quell its tremors before it erupts but Shikamaru's next word does that and more.

"Gaara."

He is watching her closely, carefully – she can't breathe.

The doors of the surgery room burst open; Tsunade steps out haggard and thin-lipped; chaos and questions assault the medic nin all at once.

Temari stands stiff and apart. Something abrades the flesh of her throat, sears the flat of her tongue, rolls off vulnerable and drowned under the pandemonium.

"Pain."

* * *

Konoha's hospital whelms with unknown smells, unknown faces. It is the second time Gaara comes here, but unlike the first, the stimulant of blood-spilling doesn't overcome everything else. He can _smell_. He can _see_.

His steps are slow, perhaps even reluctant. He _feels_ – but the feeling is too novel to name. Gaara walks through corridor after corridor until he finds himself outside the room he seeks. His back leans against the wall, mere inches from the door that leads inside. Minutes, maybe even hours, pass.

"You _can_ come in." Rock Lee's voice filters through glass and wood and concrete. It is neither welcome nor unwelcome, merely a boy's voice, if high-pitched to some degree.

Gaara's back detaches from the wall, and he is walking inside. Slower steps, perhaps even more reluctant. He doesn't look at the other boy or speak, only finds another wall to lean against. Minutes, maybe even hours, pass.

"I wanted to thank you." Rock Lee's voice filters through his ears, merely a boy's voice, less high-pitched now that nothing separates them. "If you hadn't appeared when you did, I would have –"

"No need." Gaara is speaking before he can grasp that he does. His pulse is a belaboring beat beneath his ribs and that phrase is drilling into his mind. _No_ need. No _need_. _No need_.

A sigh resonates with the frenzy of his heart and thoughts. Gaara raises his eyes, tracking the sound to its owner. Rock Lee lies on the hospital bed, covered in bandages from head to toe, one leg encased in a cast and elevated, brows creased and sighing again.

"This isn't your fault." A half-smile lodges itself on one side of his cheek. "I knew the risks when I entered the Chūnin exams…and when I used that technique."

Gaara's throat is too dry but he speaks past the dryness – past that unnamed feeling he slowly comes to know as…guilt.

"You don't…begrudge me?"

"Are you going to apologize if I do?" One thick brow lifts. Silence. Another sigh. "Do you feel like you need to do that?"

Gaara keeps quiet – because he doesn't know what follows after guilt. He barely knows guilt as it is. But he needs to do _something_. Even if he apologizes though, will it bear the meaning it must hold? Will it mean anything to the broken boy lying on that bed?

"I will accept your apology, if that will make you feel better." Rock Lee smiles again, his smile full, his lips strained, his voice unlike a boy's. "But it won't, right?"

Gaara can do nothing but nod. Rock Lee nods as well.

"Then like you said…no need."


	4. Sand

The rain comes. The rain comes. The rain comes and comes and comes and comes until rage floods the arid cavity of the desert and water-demons grip its limbs and pull with slick-muscled arms and stretch the denuded surface of the world he drowns in.

Gaara slants his neck far back until he is nothing but a baring of throat and wet skin. His eyes are closed and love burns like blood-fire on the left side of his forehead. One stroke, and another, sand hard-slicked and knife-edged and cutting deep but not deep enough. Thirteen times it cuts. Thirteen times it bleeds. Thirteen times it loves.

Love is the essence of opium; love is the seeking of pain. Love is being exposed; love is the scar that must be a wound, the hot dripping of flesh carved anew, split over and over until the blood welling inside the lines that form it becomes its throbbing core.

Gaara can give himself death when it rains. The water runs through dips and crevices and washes away everything – the sand, the blood, the beast, the madness. Little by little, stroke after stroke, one urge is dying and another is being born from the silt it leaves behind.

* * *

Chapter Four

* * *

Morning light falls overhead and casts shadow on each step Gaara takes. The Suna Academy's training grounds swarm with genin and noise but all voices dry up at his entrance – all but one.

"Ohayō, Gaara-sensei." Soft-spoken, with a tint of abashment. Matsuri wrings her hands behind her back, lips half-bitten, half-smiling up at him.

Gaara's chin dips in a quarter of a nod. "Matsuri."

It pleases her, that he acknowledges her, speaks her name. Gaara can see it in the flush of her cheeks and the flutter of her lashes, the way she lowers her eyes and sways back and forth on the soles of her feet. It is…strange – her reaction to him, the sensation that comes with it – but not disturbing, merely unfamiliar. She needs him in a manner that he is not used to being needed. The origins of her need are different to what they have always been. Matsuri doesn't want a monster – she wants a mentor.

One loud clearing of throat, quite unnecessary. Gaara is aware of Kankurō's presence without his vocal ostentation. His brother is wretchedly fond of fustian and fanfare.

"Mind if I attend your class? My taijutsu skills are…well, you know how they are."

Kankurō grins without the merest sliver of shame for what he admits, and most children snicker. Nothing but an excuse, despite the truth in it. His brother is here because that allays the tension, the wariness, the fear.

"Lacking," is all Gaara says.

More grinning, more snickering.

"I suppose that's one way of putting it, but I'd prefer the term 'secondary to my puppet mastery'."

If let be, Kankurō is liable to waste the lesson away with bombastic praise of the puppet technique and more recruits to his dream of building a shinobi squad of puppet masters. These children barely know the basics of taijutsu, though. Hence, Gaara ends the hunt for gullible neophytes before it begins.

"Split into pairs."

A chorus of _hai_ and the scrambling of feet as they choose partners ensue.

"Kankurō." His brother meets Gaara's eyes with humming amusement. "You will spar with me."

It shrivels into groaning pique. A protest is quick to come out of Kankurō's mouth. "I wasn't planning to actually partici–" Surrender is as quick under Gaara's stare. "Just…go easy on me in front of the kids."

Gaara's kick is assent enough. Slow. Awfully. _Slow_. The fact that Kankurō avoids it only by a scant margin speaks louder than words. His brother's close combat skills are…below even lacking without the support of his puppets. Still, Gaara takes it slow, observes his students, catalogues each one's strengths and weaknesses. Sand disperses and congregates throughout the training grounds, coils around knees and elbows, soft-clasped nudges and pulls.

"You're supposed…to teach them how to guard and attack…not silently correct their stance with your sand." Kankurō pants more than speaks in the middle of blocking another kick he hasn't been swift enough to avoid.

Gaara holds back a little more, almost unconsciously. "They fear me but not the sand."

Natural. Sacrosanct. No child of the desert fears the sand – that much is true. It is regarded with a counterpoise of veneration and embitterment but never fear. One cannot fear what is known since birth and till death. Sand is the _All Mother_.

"They don't fear you, Gaara…their parents do." One leaping evasion. "These kids don't know how you used to be to fear you…only what their parents tell them." One heaving grunt. "It's just the promise of fear they've been fed that makes them stay away. If you talked to them…"

Gaara stops mid-attack, and Kankurō folds into himself with a grumble of _'bout damn time._

"Matsuri." His voice is deep and low frequencies of command.

All activity wilts under that sound. The girl's head turns in a too-abrupt motion, eyes wild and glazed with heat. She is gasping breaths and strung tight under his scrutiny.

"Gaara-sensei?" His name spills out thin, throaty, tremulous.

"You are physically weaker than your opponent. Don't try to match him in strength." She flinches as if stung by a barbed whip, and Gaara rewords his advice. "It doesn't mean you're weak. You simply need to leverage your weight to defend or inflict damage."

"Oh." Teeth drag across her bottom lip compulsively. She swallows once, twice, and again. Gaara can see nervousness rippling in the cords of her neck and over the frantic drum of her pulse.

"I, um, how should I –" Dark-red color smears along the angles of her cheekbones and down the line of her collarbone. Matsuri is bending her waist and speaking behind a mass of matted hair. "Can you please teach me?"

Girls are too sensitive, he realizes. He rolls the word in his mind until he is satisfied with its meaning. _Sensitive. Not weak._

He teaches her with patience, and as he does so, one by one, more students approach. Carefully at first, not too closely, then less careful, more closer.

"Gaara-sensei, please teach us as well."

He nods and teaches them with more patience. It feels… _good_. To be needed in this way.

It is noon by the time he ends the class and two hours after it is supposed to have ended. Kankurō sidles up to him with an easy grin, showing white teeth and openness.

"It suits you, that Gaara _-sensei_."

"It feels…different." He likes _different_. He _wants_ different. "Different than what it used to be."

Kankurō arches a brow, part-confused, part-grinning. "What is?"

Gaara's gaze lingers on the backs of the students as they idly leave. "To be needed."

A peculiar sound falls off Kankurō's lips, something between a snort and a laugh. Gaara glances up at him but all that remains is its echo and dark – dark – pulling eyes.

"Suna will always need you, Gaara. You are its sand and blood."


	5. Gold

The summer blazes. The summer blazes. The summer blazes and blazes and blazes and blazes until the earth melts into igneous matter and fever rises out of the hot vapors and mirages dream up delirium and whisper from within the tranced mind of the world he burns in.

Gaara licks the summer-lust off his lips. One lap of tongue – slow and wet and dragging. Men cover their heads and bodies and creep in the shadows but not the women. Strips of skin flaunted and vulnerable throats, swells of soft flesh and the delicious smell of prey. _Prey_. Women are nothing but _bait_ when summer comes. It tastes like sugar-blood and flesh-heat and madness.

Madness is the medulla of instincts; madness is the hunger of carnivores. Madness is being quenchless; madness is the medium for sanity, the foul meat that shapes and fattens the tanuki's insides, slab after slab guzzled until its mass is thin enough for teeth to bite through and out of it.

Gaara prowls and stalks and summer-hunts. Close, and closer he comes. It is merely the illusion he seeks – never the blood, the skin, the organs, the bones underneath that taste of prey. He kills the men in the shadows when they think themselves the hunters but never the women. Those kills…he relishes.

* * *

Chapter Five

* * *

One hour and one brass of nonsense. Perhaps less than one hour and more than one brass of nonsense. Temari stays quiet and listens. _Quiet_. _Listens_. All her mind registers is a tautology. Pharisaic. Debasing. The Council elders iterate the words Daimyō and funding and _marriage_ as if she is not even in the room with them – despite the fact that her name, her dignity, her life is tied to the latter. Her eyes stray to Baki now and then for the littlest fragments of seconds but he never meets her gaze. Not once. Filaments of panic whorl around her neck, twisting and knitting into one tight noose. Suffocation. Her lungs are seething with each shallow intake of air and what she wants to exhale is not breath but _no_.

Inhalation. Exhalation. Inhalation. "No."

Silence, and all eyes on her. All but Baki's. It feels like she has detonated an explosive right in the middle of a peace talk. Some are rendered blind, some charred to the bone, some choke-full of shrapnel. Jōseki is the first to recover from the shock of his injuries.

"What do you mean _no_?" His face is deformed beyond recognition. Monstrous guise, bestial roar. "You will do as you are comma–"

"Jōseki." Gōza's tone is calm, always calm, but she isn't fooled. When he pins her with his stare, Temari shivers at the things she sees in it. Reality. Sapience. Warning. "Do you not understand the significance of the matter?"

"I do." She nods and swallows to hydrate her throat. It will take much more than Gōza's sage eyes to make her cower. This isn't about not giving in to their demands but not giving up on herself. And _she just can't_. "But it's still my decision – and my answer is no." Her chin lifts high, higher with every word she speaks. "I'm a Suna kunoichi, not some highbred hime. I was trained in Fūton and Kuchiyose no jutsu, not Chadō and Ikebana."

"None of that matters." There isn't the barest inflection in Sajō's voice. Matter-of-fact. "We need the Daimyō's funding, and if this is what must be done to gain it, then you will obey."

Her lips tremble. They shouldn't. Temari wants to tear them off her face for their betrayal – and feed them to Baki. _Look at me, you bastard_. The least he can do is look into her eyes and own up to _his_ betrayal.

"Temari." Gōza is _too_ calm. If he ever snaps, it will probably resemble a volcano eruption. Temari is tempted to provoke him until he does, if only to watch him buried in the crater of his own fury. "Be reasonable."

Her lips tremble more – Baki _is_ looking at her. His mouth is a string of grim resolve and the black of his eyes an abysmal pit. Wrath dissolves into relief. _He_ _will speak for me_. It may not bear any fruit. It may amount to nil. But it is _enough_ for her. As long as he stands up for her, Temari can forget – forgive – his earlier hesitation.

Baki's lips part. Temari's lips still.

"Enough." _Deep_. Sovereign. _Low_. Terror. That voice drips with deadly impulses – but it isn't Baki's.

Gaara stands before her. His hair is the color of rusted blood and she can see nothing beyond that. Sand rasps against her skin with a purring _siss_. Back and forth, languorous, stroking. Her _brother_ stands before her.

"Gaara…" She calls his name softly, breathlessly.

"Temari." His head slopes down and to the side, one cheekbone cut sharp and high, skin pale and stretched thin over its angular line. "Leave."

"She isn't to go anywhe–"

Jōseki is choking on sand-aggression. Temari can see nothing except Gaara's back but she can hear the sand filling Jōseki's mouth and rushing deep down his throat. Deeper. _Deeper_. She turns and leaves with the satisfaction of that _deeper_.

* * *

Baki stares, and can't stop staring. Numb, stunned. _Rasa –?_ No…no. This fourteen year old boy isn't Rasa…and _he is_. One part of him is – the part that now speaks.

"Who negotiated with the new Daimyō?"

No one answers – because the person who must is still coughing and shaking with violent spasms. The part that inflicts this torture isn't Rasa. It's _Sabaku no Gaara._ When the onslaught recedes to the point where Jōseki can speak, he levels Gaara with such hatred that it sullies his voice and blackened soot pours out of his lungs.

" _I_ …did."

"Then _you_ will send word that the terms could not be met and request to renegotiate."

"You insolen–"

Sand-choking. _Again_ , and deeper. Rage sucks in all the oxygen and culminates asphyxiation. Out of them all, Baki alone can _breathe_ , can _speak_. It's Gaara's allowance, he knows. For Temari's sake.

"And what will we offer in exchange?"

"Water." It's so unexpected that Baki draws back, confused, skeptic. But what Gaara says makes perfect sense. "The capital is a drying oasis, or so they think. Water still runs deep underground, but they can't find it. I can bring it to the surface."

Confusion distills into hope. Skepticism ripens into admiration.

"You can't be…considering this." Jōseki's ruptured croak goes unheeded by all.

Baki gives him the minimum consideration only because he is obligated due to Jōseki's station. "There's nothing to consider, but for legality's sake, we'll vote." Pure condescension, and eleven hands raised. "Majority is in favor."

It marks the end of misery and the beginning of prosperity for Suna. Baki smiles for the first time in one and a half years. _Rasa…you left your gold with us._


	6. Acceptance

The sand stretches. The sand stretches. The sand stretches and stretches and stretches and stretches until the sweeping ribcage of the desert is cracked open and sultry flesh is turning inside out. From within the gaping fissures heart and lungs swell and hemorrhage between the jagged teeth of the world he feeds on.

Gaara peels his lips back, feral impulse sliding down the points of his canines. His lids are shut and squeezed until the eyeless black becomes the facsimile of sand-blood. The air is hot and thick with the tang of viscera. Lumps of raw flesh and tissue, odors of bodily fluids and copper. Death is fresh-wrought, sticking heavy and slick on his skin, _living_. Shukaku strokes the bars of his cage and rubs his face against his seal and croons to him. His voice is soft and natural like psithurism and _yes, yeeees, yesss._

It is as if he wants to pet and be petted, as if Gaara isn't his Jinchūriki but his master.

Jinchūriki is the sin of power-lust; Jinchūriki is the stigma of demon-love. Jinchūriki is being aware; Jinchūriki is the darkest kind of symbiosis, the merging of soul and hatred and bloodlust, human and beast bound as one and bound to never be one.

Gaara opens his eyes and everything shatters – the chimera of submission, the sibilance of satisfaction, the monstrosity of affection. Shukaku rampages in his cage and rattles his chains. His voice is a shrill cacophony and an effusion of _kill, kiiiill, kkkkill._

No more. Gaara tells him _no more_ and runs blood-fingers through the tanuki's sand-hide and that shackles tighter than the seal-chains.

* * *

Chapter Six

* * *

Two years have passed. It's only two years but feels nothing like _only_. Each hour has been a day, each day a month, each month a year. Time moves with hypersonic speed for someone who has once been suspended in limbo.

Gaara is too young and too old, has seen too little and too much, has felt too empty and too full.

When the sun begins to rise on the first day of the third year, he stands at the edge of the Kazekage's balcony with his back to the East. Sunrays stream hotly over the angles of his body, and behind him, his family grins and urges and nods. Kankurō. Temari. Baki. A waft of zephyrs rustles softly through his hair, and below him, his village waits and whispers and stares up at him. Many tongues, many eyes. Much suspense, much unease. They regard him with one quarter of fear, one quarter of suspicion, and two quarters of _hope_. War has made them more weary than wary, he knows. Weary enough to be willing to accept him not as _something_ but other.

Shinobi.

Kazekage.

 _Someone needed_.

Gaara doesn't wear the Kage's headpiece because he wants them to see his face, _see_ _him_. They _need_ the shinobi who wears it, but Gaara wants them to need _him_. Perhaps it's selfish, or perhaps it's selfless – all of Suna's Kage have been that way, selflessly giving their lives for the village, when in reality, it is done selfishly. They die when they are _most needed_. Gaara can't distinguish what decides their time of death. How much is mercurial fate and how much is personal choice?

He shifts precipitately, one down-slant of eyes and neck. Time moves motionlessly, one flat line that starts in his vocal cords and ends in their ear canals.

"Suna has suffered many losses through senseless war. I can't promise another war won't come, but I can promise you this." Gaara spreads his arms wide and shadow overstretches and swallows all beneath him. " _Here_ and _now_ , I will stand before you and nothing will harm those who stand behind me. For as long as I stand – there will be no more death, no more blood."

His voice rides on the zephyrs and passes through the hollows of the desert and comes back as drawn-out echoes of _no more_. Time moves limitlessly, one resonant vibration that pulses with _need_ and burrows deep into hearts and bursts out of throats. They don't holler his name but _Kazekage-sama_ and that is enough for now. If he stands longer than those who die too soon, one day they will.

Baki's nod is the first thing Gaara sees when he turns around even as the celebration still holds strong below.

"Well done."

Gaara returns it with one of his own. Kankurō's grin then.

"I can't believe you're better than me at speeches when you barely talk."

That grin…he can't return. It's just another thing that will come one day. Temari returns it for him, with one thwack at the back of Kankurō's skull.

" _Ouch_. What the hell, Temari?"

"Show some respect. He's the Kazekage now."


	7. Fire

_A/N:_ Mild Sexual Content. _If you have issues with_ underage _sex_ _or sexual content in general_ _, read no further._ _Please heed this note._

* * *

The heat rises. The heat rises. The heat rises and rises and rises and rises until the thighs of the desert quiver and flame licks high up their sandy curves and delves deep inside and moans from within the fleshly core of the world he strokes.

Gaara never cares how hot the sand burns – he still sinks his fingers in the hot- _hot_ -mass and _touches_ , touches, touches. The soft parts of his hands become red-hot and scorched. It doesn't matter. _She_ is willing; she whispers; she touches.

Touch is the chamber of torture; touch is the promise of death. Touch is being fearless; touch is the cruelest sense, never given without a price to pay, always shapeshifting into something other than its nature.

Touch is never _touch_ for Gaara.

* * *

Chapter Seven

* * *

Gaara steps into the office prepared for his use henceforth. Light filters through the vitreous glass of the window, washes over him, bright gold purified into luminosity. He feels naked and newborn, as if he's seeing the sun for the first time.

The room is stripped bare, merely one desk and one chair, and he supposes it's that way because they don't know what he prefers – but that's exactly what he wants. It won't remain as is for long anyway. Kankurō will insist on adding pictures and bizarre, colorful paintings; Temari will bring flowers and pretty, glittering things; Baki will bedeck the walls with weaponry and exotic, animal skins.

A knock comes after he sits, soft tapping of knuckles. Instinct precedes conscious thought, ingrained too deep to be overcome. The door is being slid open and sand coils around the woman's calves, thighs, waist, chest, neck. Gaara stills. For a moment, he expects screaming, horror, flailing, disgust, running.

A gasp echoes, and she shivers. Nothing more, nothing less. Sand uncoils, and she walks inside. Gaara studies her closely, slowly. Her face is small and unpainted but for the redness of her lips. Her age shows in the fulvous chestnut of her eyes, the sway of her full hips, that flutter of thick lashes, that curling of red- _red_ -lips. Perhaps ten years older than him, perhaps less.

"Kazekage-sama." Her voice is low notes and huskiness, as if she likes the sound her own throat makes, and how she speaks his title is a lick of mellifluence. "I'm called Rami, and I've been assigned to the Kazekage's Office for the past five years."

"Rami." He tastes the name. Raw honey, viscous, sweetly addictive. It suits her, like the color of her hair, the color of his sand.

"Yes." A smile arches and thins those cherry lips. "I mainly deal with secretarial and administrative tasks."

It draws his eyes, his mind. The gasp that has spilled past them – he wants to hear it again, now.

"I see." Gaara sees nothing beyond the memory of that sound.

Her smile arches higher, thins her lips more. "If you need anything, please don't hesitate to call me."

 _Something_ in the way she says this drags his eyes away from her lips and up – up into hers. Fire liquefies in the glazed mirror of her eyes, crawls over him, dark gold melted into heat. It's not what lurks there that sizzles but what doesn't.

He sees _no_ _fear_ in her eyes.

* * *

Two weeks pass. She brings his green tea every morning. It's hot and slightly bitter and just the way he likes it.

* * *

Four weeks pass. She puts a small cactus on the sill of his window. It blooms into a single flower smeared with the essence of _waiting_ and decadence. Its petals glisten deep carmine and its eye simmers dark gold.

* * *

Two months pass. She is polite but still rejects his brother. It's the fourth and last time Kankurō tries and the first time Gaara tastes the burn of sake. He drinks with his brother and listens to Kankurō's monologue. It is nothing but a slurred ribbon of words that winds around Gaara's mind only to unwind in the morning. Kankurō grins and casually pats his back as if to say that it's Gaara's time to try now. Nothing escapes that grin.

* * *

Four months pass. She is forty minutes late to show for work. It's unprecedented and worrisome and he doesn't like it. The tang of blood and salt-sweat clings to her skin when she comes, makes her lips redder, darker. She only smiles and says nothing. Gaara follows the trail of the blood-scent back to its origin. A man lies on his back, ripped and groaning, hidden in the shade of a narrow alley. Gaara knows his kind – yellow teeth and breath putrid, the stench of filth-lust, something that is less than animal, nothing more than organic waste. He kills him slowly, agonizingly.

* * *

Four months and two weeks pass. She circles his desk and bends to place a few scrolls on its right edge. Her neckline dips low but not low enough. Fabric stretches over the swell of her breasts and her scent wafts in the space between them. She smells of pomegranate seeds, something sweet-tart and intoxicating. His fingers are wrapping around her wrist, dragging her closer and over his lap – there is _that gasp_ he has fantasized over and over in his sleepless sleep for months to no end. It's everything he remembers _and more_.

Her weight settles on him but merely that. Gaara pulls her against him and breathes her in. Skin on skin, _fire_ and _woman_. He rubs the hollow of her neck with his thumb, feels the pounding pulse as it slows and speeds, wants to feel it beating on his tongue. More sounds come when he takes her throat between his teeth, draws blood to the surface and licks without spilling. The only thing that spills is gasps and slick urgency as she shifts her thighs and guides his hand between them. Wetness soaks his fingers – he moves them maddeningly slow, back and forth, against and inside. She arches and twists and moans the more they tease, the harder they press, the deeper they sink.

Soon it becomes too much and her sounds fragment into syllables.

"Kaze-kage-sa-"

He likes the voice that makes those sounds but not the sounds themselves. Teeth nibble her lips and pry them open. His tongue fills her mouth with his name. Once, twice, and again – until his name maps the inside of her mouth, tangles with her tongue, snakes down her throat. It comes rushing back husky and wet and becomes too much for him then. Gaara licks his name off her red- _red_ -lips and lifts her on his desk.

She is soft and willing and weighs nothing when he lifts her. Has anyone ever been soft and willing for him? Has anything ever weighted nothing? No… _no_. But _now,_ with _her_ …yes, _yes_.

Slim fingers fumble with his sash and he lets her – lets her undress him, touch him, feel him. Until that too, becomes too much. Her hands are warm and stroking his neck, fingers splaying, pulling him in for another kiss. Gaara sucks the honey off her tongue, and enters her. Flesh swollen, soft tissue being stretched around him, dripping hot and tightness. He hisses at the flex of gripping muscle, or perhaps that is the hiss of sand on skin. His knuckles curl and nails bite into wood. Sand rakes down his spine, mixed with sweat and searing the expanse of his back. He burns all over, inside out.

One twist of hips, deeper, hotter, more tightness, more sounds. She is a writhing mass of half-moans and half-mewls, knees bending and locking around his waist. Closer. _Closer_. His head dips and tongue and teeth drag over one nipple, teasing it into an even harder peak. His name then, and spasms, constriction, nerves screaming with flares of white-hot flame. Each thrust wrings out one prolonged moan of his name. She is falling apart and throwing him into a vortex of sensitivity. Pleasure grows and _grows_ and erupts in shocks of electric heat – heat spilling inside.

Gaara is kissing her and she is coiling around him with slick-soft thighs and arms. He lets her – lets her even though his back seethes with raw sensations and he can feel _blood_ trickling down the line of his spine. He doesn't care. He doesn't care. He doesn't care. _He_ _doesn't_ …he laughs – and takes her again. And again.


	8. Love

The moon waxes. The moon waxes. The moon waxes and waxes and waxes and waxes until the white witch that lives in its maria comes down to the plains of the desert and reaches out with glowing fingers and strums the heartstrings of the world he loves.

Gaara hears the desert-song, bright love-song, each note a heartbeat, each verse a confession.

Heart is the weight of the world; heart is the drumming silence. Heart is being vulnerable; heart is the link that connects love and lips, the unfading smile through suffering, the sole thing that can be cut and cut and cut and cut but never killed.

His heart _lives_.

* * *

Chapter Eight

* * *

Silence suffuses the atmosphere and awareness suffuses the silence. Gaara's eyes never stray from the scroll Konoha's emissary has come to personally deliver. He is always none other than Nara Shikamaru.

Gaara is half-reading the words, half-feeling the silence. _Something_ lives with an infant pulse, having barely been born, drifting back and forth and between. It ranges from sixty to one hundred beats a minute. He counts the beats with each flick of Temari's eyes, each stretch of Shikamaru's neck.

His own flesh throbs with an irregular rhythm to those beats, and what lives inside him is nothing but misshapen imitation of that organ. Thirteen, twenty six, fifty two, one hundred and four. Blood-limned, fire-licked, carved on his skin, kept for himself. Because he's had no one else to give _his_ heart, no one else wanting to take the maimed thing that it is. Perhaps that is why he can now rip it out of his chest and scatter the broken pieces until everyone holds one in their hands. Whether they cut themselves on that little shard of love or not is their choice just as it is his choice to cut himself open for them. Another Konoha shinobi has taught him that.

Gaara's eyes rise from the scroll, flicker between Temari and Shikamaru, then settle on the latter. Silence thickens with intimations that are too intimate, and Shikamaru clears his throat. His features become tighter, his poise less languid. Nothing has gone unnoticed but it will go unspoken.

"Uzumaki Naruto." The name is full of strong consonants, airy vowels, slices of kinship, longing. "Has he returned to Konoha?"

It's out of context but warm and Gaara truly wants to know. If Shikamaru is surprised, it doesn't show.

"Not yet." Flat, though slightly drawling.

Shikamaru doesn't even shake his head, as if the motion requires more effort than he's willing to spend for trivialities, and Gaara returns on topic.

"Temari will escort you back to Konoha to finalize the details pertaining to the Chūnin exams. You may rest here tonight and depart tomorrow morning."

A twist of neck this time. Shikamaru _almost_ bows his head, or at least as much as he deems enough to pass for a token of respect, gratitude. Temari takes charge then, leading him out of Gaara's office and to wherever she wants. Gaara doesn't much mind – Temari's decisions are hers to make and anyone who hurts her is his to slaughter – unlike someone else. Kankurō may have remained uninvolved so far, nothing more than quiet umbra behind Gaara's chair, but all that changes in an instant.

"Kankurō."

His brother is two seconds from exiting the room and following the pair when Gaara's voice arrests him mid-step. Kankurō pivots, and beneath the purple paint, Gaara notes the beginnings of petulance.

He merely stares at him.

"Really?" A pout, and tongue clicking. "Fine." A scowl, and teeth gnashing. "But if he dare-"

"You know he won't." _And if he does, I'll deal with him._

The message is clear, impossible to miss.

Kankurō scoffs. "Only because he's too damn lazy." Still, he relents.

When he sits down, there's no sign of that petulance, only a dark-lined smile.

"I still remember what you said that day." Kankurō's chuckle is low but deep with meaning.

Gaara knows what will come next before it does.

"Kinda hard to forget. First time you ever smiled like that." It's almost as if he's coaxing that smile, wanting to see it again, and perhaps he is. "And look at you now, being where you said you'd be, where you should be."

There's a long pause, loaded with _waiting_ and _just smile, goddammit_. Gaara keeps staring at his brother. His mouth doesn't move a millimeter. If he has to be honest, he does so because it amuses him. Kankurō sighs, his sigh brimming with the same qualities of that pause, and Gaara already knows what will come again.

"I'm proud of you, proud to be your brother, that you let me –"

"Kankurō." _That_ smile. "I know."

"Well…good." Despite his brother's best efforts to appear slighted – because he can tell that Gaara has used him as fodder for his amusement when Kankurō is the one to be serious for once – his grin betrays him. "Don't you forget now."

* * *

 _A/N: Canon takes it from here. My intention was to explore those dark years between Konoha's crush and Akatsuki's abduction that Kishimoto never touched, and this was my take. I hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I did writing it. :)_


End file.
